Discard Trope: Pen Pushing President

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Created By: Lyendith on November 6, 2012 Last Edited By: Lyendith on November 24, 2012

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Pen Pushing President

Being in charge mostly means signing and stamping mountains of papers.

Name Space:Main

Page Type:Trope

Who didn't dream to one day be appointed President of a country, executive of a big company, or leader of a big organisation? You can give orders, have a pretty life, and have the most important and spotlight-earning jobs! You can be a hero and a model!

And now that you have won the election, here is a pen and a stamp: warm up your arm, 'cause from now on you will use them a lot. Apparently, the main activity of people in charge is to spend their days with a desk and giant piles of papers as only company. Of course it isTruth in Television to some extent (notably in law-related responsibilities), but naturally, in fiction it tends to be exaggerated to the point of torture. Expect some secretary to occasionally show up in the office with an additional pile, to the dismay of their boss. Usually Played for Laughs to show a less glamourous side of leadership.

Despite the title, it can apply to "Presidents" but also to any job involving some kind of important leadership.

Examples:

King Enma in Dragon Ball, as the man in charge of deciding who will go to Heaven or Hell in the entire universe is usually shown chain-stamping files without so much as looking at them, while complaining about his insane amount of work.

Hanaukyō Maid Tai. In one episode Taro finds that one of his daily duties as head of the family is going through a huge pile of paperwork and signing documents.

The Hokage is sometimes portrayed like this in Naruto, including Tsunade after she assumed the role. They are by definition one of the strongest fighters in their village, but their job is mostly to assign missions rather than go on them.

In Bruce Almighty, when Bruce is made God for a Day, he is suddenly confronted with the prayers of millions of people--which are presented in one scene as a massive layer of "Post-It" notes covering every wall and surface in his home. He then clears the clutter by instantly converting them to an e-mail format on his computer ("You've got prayers!").

In Rainbow Six, John Clark laments that he's a bureaucrat and not an elite counter-terrorism soldier like his men. Rainbow jumps out of helicopters and trains to put bullets between eyes with perfect accuracy, Rainbow Six sits at his desk and has to justify the dollar value of each bullet.

Sam Vimes spends a few Discworld City Watch books lamenting the piles of paperwork he's obliged to deal with as its Commander. Eventually averted when he recruits some secretarial help, first from the Gooseberry-imp and then from A.E. Pessimal.

Averted by Archchancellor Ridcully, who just lets the paperwork pile up on his desk, periodically bins it, and assumes that if anything is really important someone will start shouting soon enough.

In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Ivan notes that while many people are envious of Emperor Gregor Vorbarra's power, he's never heard of anyone being envious of Gregor's desk.

The Stargate SG-1 episodes "Zero Hour" and "Lockdown" played this for laughs as Jack O'Neill settled into his new job as commanding officer of Stargate Command. Both episodes featured an instance of sorting through piles of reports and memos to find something.

In the military, this is often mockingly referred to as a "Chairborne Ranger", a high-ranked officer who spends his days behind a desk in a cozy office yet pretends to know how life is on the frontlines.

The Stargate SG 1 episodes "Zero Hour" and "Lockdown" played this for laughs as Jack O'Neill settled into his new job as commanding officer of Stargate Command. Both episodes featured an instance of sorting through piles of reports and memos to find something.

In Rainbow Six, John Clark laments that he's a bureaucrat and not an elite counter-terrorism soldier like his men. Rainbow jumps out of helicopters and trains to put bullets between eyes with perfect accuracy, Rainbow Six sits at his desk and has to justify the dollar value of each bullet.

On NCIS this is one of the reasons why Gibbs never tried to become director of the agency. Whenever he has to step in as acting director people always complain that he is ignoring vital paperwork. He prefers to leave the job to people with the temperament necessary to handle bureaucracy and politics.

The Hokage is sometimes portrayed like this in Naruto even applies to Tsunade sometimes after she assumed the role. They are by definition one of the strongest fighters in their village, but their job is mostly to assign missions rather than go on them.

Sam Vimes spends a few Discworld City Watch books lamenting the piles of paperwork he's obliged to deal with as its Commander. Eventually averted when he recruits some secretarial help, first from the Gooseberry-imp and then from A.E. Pessimal.

^^ Actually, it was mainly Google spiderbots who kept removing tags (and not just from one or two, but pretty much all of them). So, only the YKTTW's original author (and mods) are allowed to remove tags now. It's a bug, yes.

^ Does tag removal use a GET request at the HTTP level? 'cos there's your bug right there. GET's not supposed to ever change anything on the server, and indexing bots use that to decide whether or not it's safe to follow a link.

In Bruce Almighty, when Bruce is made God For A Day, he is suddenly confronted with the prayers of millions of people--which are presented in one scene as a massive layer of "Post-It" notes covering every wall and surface in his home. He then clears the clutter by instantly converting them to an e-mail format on his computer ("You've got prayers!").

In the military, this is often mockingly referred to as a "Chairborne Ranger", a high-ranked officer who spends his days behind a desk in a cozy office yet pretends to know how life is on the frontlines.

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